undecided ohio voter, meet a undecided ohio voter, meet a bus ful of alabama republicans. what could possibly go wrong? i wonder if they will have matching hats. that does it for us tonight. now it's time for a special live friday edition of "the last word."

>> over today's jobs reports. >> now we've sea got jobbers. >> business pioneer jack welch calls these numbers into question. >> these numbers don't smell right. >> jack welch was a successful businessman. >> this is about asking questions. >> on this subject he has absolutely no idea what he's talking about. congressman west, take it away. >> you can't deny the numbers. >> don't challenge my intelligence. >> there's not a shred of evidence they've ever manipulated this number. >> people have stopped looking for work. >> more and more people have just stopped looking for work. >> that is definitely not the case. >> completely wrong. >> people are not giving up. they're going back into the work force. >> i think i get the last word. >> i won't allow that to happen and that is why i'm running for a second term of president of the united states.

good evening, i'm ezra klein in for lawrence o'donnell. it's 32 days until the election, though we are only 5 days into october, we've already had two october surprises. first, there was president obama's weak debate performance. and then today the jobs report, the second-to-last monthly jobs report to be released before the election is very good news for president obama. unemployment has fallen below 8% for the first time since the president took office in january 2009. the september jobs report showed the u.s. added 114,000 jobs with the unemployment rate dropping to 7.8%. the better news was the bureau of labor statistics was revising job reports for the last two months finding the economy actually added 181,000 jobs up from 141,000 in august. and in august the economy added

142,000 jobs up from the initially lack luster 96,000 initially reported. so there were in total 200,000 new jobs on this jobs report. president obama tried to put today's good news jobs report in context, campaigning in virginia. >> after losing about 800,000 jobs a month when i took office, our businesses have now added 5.2 million new jobs over the past 2 1/2 years. this morning we found out that the unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest level since i took office. more americans entered the work force, more people are getting jobs. it's a reminder that this country has come too far to turn back now.

>> mitt romney also campaigning in virginia. not as impressed. >> we don't have to stay in the path we've been on. we can do better. there was a report that just came out this morning on job creation this last month. there were fewer new jobs created this month than last month. and the unemployment rate as you know this year has come down very slowly, but it's come down nonetheless. the reason it's come down this year is prime rarely due to the fact that more and more people have just stopped looking for work. >> what mitt romney is getting at there, when you look at a report like this where the unemployment rate is dropping but there aren't that many new jobs, you worry immediately that you're seeing a kind of trick. in particular, you worry that the unemployment rate dropped because discouraged workers gave up and they stopped looking. that did not happen this month.

the number of people participating in the labor force went up, which means the rate didn't drop because there are fewer people looking for work. average hourly earnings also increased and here's the bad news, though, about the jobs report. we're at this point in the campaign, 32 days out from the election, where people begin to go a little crazy. all they can think about is politics. to them, everything looks political. a new conspiracy theory was born at 8:35 a.m. today with this tweet from former ge ceo jack welch. he wrote, unbelievable jobs numbers, these chicago guys will do anything. can't debate so change numbers. >> i wish i could say that the assertion that the obama campaign in chicago convinced the labor department to cook the books was universally decried. it was not. we have much more on the birth of the jobbers, a new american conspiracy theory coming up later in the show. for now the presidential campaign has been reshaped in a number of ways.

is is the way obama achieved this milestone is very nonsocialist, actually. under obama the economy has created about 967,000 private sector jobs. so if obama is in fact a socialist, he's not very good at it. second in, romney's standard stump speech, we've now had quote 43 street months with unemployment over 8%. we are now under 8%. and third, this is probably the most important for the campaign. the debate was only two days ago. today is friday. the debate was wednesday. but this is a big enough jobs report, striking enough, that it has turned the whole national conversation. romney could have used a few more days of momentum. now instead of having a weekend where anyone can talk about his debate, the jobs report is dominating the headlines.

>> joining me now is a senior fellow and was a member of the president obama's debt commission. she knows more about budgets i think than anyone in the world. and sam stein political editor and white house correspondent. thank you for being here. >> alice, 7.8 is a lot better than 8.1 but it's obviously not as low as we would like. the progress has been somewhat slow. so when you look at the numbers, you look at the trajectory of the economy over the year, how do you think a voter should understand the economy when they're judging president obama and mitt romney. >> the economy is getting better, more jobs are being created. we aren't where we would like to be. 7.8 is still quite a high unemployment rate. we would like it to be 5 or 4. there was a couple of months in

the 1990s when it got under 4. that would be terrific. but we're not there. we dug ourselves a huge hole after the financial crash of 2008. and we had this great recession which took the economy down fast and at the time that obama took over, the economy was in free fall. and since then, it's gotten better. at first, it got worse at a slower rate. that's not a great slogan. but for the last 2 1/2 years, it has gotten steadily better in the sense that jobs have grown every year. every month. >> and sam, when you talk to the obama campaign, the particular way they see the voters who are going to side with them, or at least a lot of them practically swing voters, is what they believe, as alice said, we have a very deep hole to dig out of. we're not there but we're doing as good as we can expect to be

doing. and there's been there important psychological barrier of 8%. does getting underneath that barrier to 7.8% really do much for president obama's talking point, that we have come a long way and now voters should let him finish the job, or do these kind of changes in numbers matter in washington but they're not what voters see around them so they're kind of a story here but not actually in the campaign. >> first of all i'm glad you asked alice the economic question and left me with the political stuff. she's much more better equipped to do that. i think it's a psychological motivator for a lot of people, especially for the campaign itself. we did a video mash up of all the times mitt romney talked about how the president failed to get the unemployment rate below 8% in 43 straight months. obviously that's eliminated as a talking point. to the extent that this affects voters, i don't know. the debate was watched by about

70 million people; that's a lot of people and a lot of people took away positive impressions of mitt romney from that debate. i don't foe if this competes with that. but certainly we saw in the past couple of months that people were beginning to feel a lot more confident about the economic situation personally and for the country. you saw it in the polls. we were wondering why was this data turning around. bill clinton gave a great speech at the convention and everyone loved what clinton said. it now turns out there was some underlying economic trends that was feeding that that we didn't really know about, but that makes sense now. and i think if that's the case heading into the critical month of october and obviously in november where we're going to have one more jobs report, i think that really does benefit the president. because that's been the underlying issue of this entire campaign. it's been the issue that mitt romney's campaigned on from the get-go. >> at the convention i think he

framed obama the case for obama and particularly the case for obama on the economy more clearly than anyone else has on the campaign. >> no president, no president, not me, not any of my predecessors, no one could have fully repaired all the damage that he found in just four years. when president barack obama took office, the economy was in free fall, it had just shrunk. we were losing 750,000 jobs a month. the are we doing better today? the answer is yes. >> and we should say, we are actually back now to where we were when obama got in office. but do you think bill clinton is right there? did obama do all that could have been done?

>> well, i think he did all that could have been done that the congress would let him do. with hind sight, the stimulus package should have been bigger, but at the time it was put together, there were two things that were constraining it. one was we didn't know how bad the economy was at that moment. it was still getting worse. but nobody knew how much worse it was getting. and the other was sort of sticker shock. it was a big number and the congress wasn't prepared to vote more than that. and didn't want to come back to it. >> and of course, subsequently republicans in congress refused to vote for the american jobs act. alice and sam stein thank you for joining me tonight. and thank you for giving us your wisdom on this. coming up, debunking the conspiracy theorists. mitt romney wants you to think he can leave the numbers up to the states like he did in massachusetts. i'm going to show you the math

and then talk with the guy who did that math for governor romney. that's coming up. boring. borin boring. [ jack ] after lauren broke up with me, i went to the citi private pass page and decided to be...not boring. that's how i met marilyn... giada... really good. yes! [ jack ] ...and alicia. ♪ this girl is on fire [ male announcer ] use any citi card to get the benefits of private pass. more concerts, more events, more experiences. [ jack ] hey, who's boring now? [ male announcer ] get more access with the citi card. [ crowd cheering, mouse clicks ] [ male announcer ] get more access with the citi card. if we want to improve our schools... ...what should we invest in? maybe new buildings? what about updated equipment? they can help, but recent research shows... ...nothing transforms schools like investing in advanced teacher education. let's build a strong foundation.

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we have hit that moment in the election when people begin to lose their minds. case in point, within minutes of the jobs report today, twitter filled with republicans saying the numbers must be cooked. they were job truthers, or as i like to call them, jobbers. the first jobber was jack welch the former head of g.a. and a big romney supporter. he tweeted, and yes i said jack welch tweeted, unbelievable jobs numbers. these chicago guys will do anything. can't debate so change numbers. but welch wasn't alone on his island of lunacy. keith no, there's nothing at all curious about the last jobs report diving to 7.8% unemployment before the election.

this is technically not the last jobs report before the election. a writer at the conservative "washington examiner" wrote, i don't think bls cooked the numbers. i think a bunch of dems lied about getting jobs. that would have the same effect. and then of course there was fox news, which head lined its report, is the number real? is it? yeah, it is. the jobbers need to take a deep breath and remember what we're talking about here. this is a good jobs report in a still weak economy. the 114,000 jobs we added in september, is not very impressive. we add about 100,000 new people to the work force every month. we're just getting a bit above treading water here. the revisions to the last two months which added $86,000 jobs

to the total was a much better deal. these are at best good, if not great numbers. if the white house was somehow manipulating the data, don't you think they would have made the payroll look better at 114,000? the controversy is over the unemployment rate. let's just be clear. that is .3 of 1%. that's what all the fuss is about. let's make another thing personally clear. no one played with the data. the people who say otherwise don't foe how this actually works. these numbers are one of the most closely guarded secrets in washington. the labor department designed the process after they got security device from the organization that safeguards the country's stockpile of weapons. that is how seriously they take it. the economists who report the data and put it together are put on an eight-day security lockdown.

they have to signed new binding confidentiality agreements every single morning. the computers are encrypted, the data gets put into a safe when they go to the bathroom. three days before the release when it's done, three copies of the report are placed in a safe and taken to downtown washington from a secure location where they were prepared, 12 hours before the report is released. a few might house officials get to see it. there's no chance to change any of it. but the fact is that there's not even much that needs to be explained here. we've seen jobs like this and even drops bigger than this before and recently. between july and august the unemployment rate dropped from 8.3% to 8.1%. december of 2011 also saw a .2 drop. november to december of 2010 saw a .4% drop. so this isn't some incredibly

weird number that needs to be explained. the fact that the unemployment rate broke the 8% line. is not that big. one thing you do need to know. the number could of course be wrong. the household survey is, well, a survey of household. when means it is open to error. but the internals back it up. the drop in unemployment came because 800,000 people said they now had jobs. that now seems high. it's counting 582,000 who say they got part-time jobs. and that seems to happen around this time of year. part-time jobs increase by 579,000 in september 2010 and in by 483,000 in 2011. it might be seasonal hiring, kids going back to school. you don't need to resort to

ridiculous theories that democrats across the country all deciding to lie to survey takers in order to help obama. the bottom line on this report, it's an encouraging report. what it tells us is that the labor market has been better than we thought and that the recovery hasn't slowed in quite the ways we feared. what the response to it tells us is that the election is driving people a little bit crazy. joining me now, a man never driven crazy by elections or anything else, "washington post" economics reporter neil irwin. i'm going to play you what jack welch had to say today. listen to this. >> these numbers don't smell right when you think about where the economy is right now. it's just ironic that these assumptions all came this way the month before the election. you draw your own conclusions. >> first, it's not actually ironic. but, i think this is what it's

been really about. it doesn't sort of if fit jack welch's sense of economy smell. it feels a little off to poem. you deal with numbers every single month. so how do they feel to you? does this feel like a surprising report to you? >> it was surprising. it was better than most people were expecting. it was better than any of the forecasters on wall street were predicting. but that happens sometimes. there's a reason they do these studies. if we already knew what was going to happen, there wouldn't be a point to doing it. and sometimes there's going to be surprises. the truth is, you alluded to this. a lot of the numbers are more consistent with what we're seeing in the economy. the payrolls number, 114,000 new jobs, that seems to match what we've been seeing the last few months. a kind of slow, gradual halting

recovery. the ups and downs happen. sometimes the survey shows a better result than is reality, sometimes a little worse. this one may be a little better than reality. it's not because somebody is cooking the books, it's because it's hard to figure out what's going on in a country of 300 million people. >> we're having a lot of conversation over where the unemployment rate is now. we're not actually talking all that much about what the candidates will do about unemployment. you just did a great piece on romney's economic advisers and who would staff him if he won the white house. when you were reporting that, what is their theory on how you create jobs? what would they do to make this unemployment number dive down in a way that jack welch would find more pleasant. >> what you hear a lot is a sense that the belief of the evidence to strengthen on the economy over the next couple of years, whether it's fiscal economy, those are sugar highs, short term things that might help a little in the short run but don't really help anything in the longer run. you have a theory that you try and fix things in the economy, get a more efficient tax code, get the deficit down over time. that that will help you.

when you give them truth serum, you're talk and you off the record, the disruption might be tough for the first few months. but they would argue that the longer term, since we're on the right track would be worth it. that's not an argument you see in the debates. it's not the way the argument gets framed. but that's the core ideological dispute in the election. >> on the other side that's been surprising is president obama, they don't talk about their big idea on the jobs. they don't talk about the jobs act. they didn't bring it up in the debates. why do you think that is? because that is a big responsive, a big idea on jobs here. >> there's a great new book called the "new new deal" about the stimulus that came out in 2009 and was almost $8 hundred billion saying it was a great success. it did a lot of things to help this recession from being worse. it's something that the president's political advisers, they do the polling.

it does not resonate with swing voters. people look around and say we're still at 7.8 unemployment, yet we're still in this crumby situation. the politics are terrible. even though most economists, most forecasters who look at this stuff every month, they think it helped. >> neil irwin, thank you for being here. >> thanks. coming up, the latest etch a sketch version of mitt romney. and later, steve martin gets political and makes an ad and kind of a mess but it's a really funny mess. can you guess who he would make a political ad for?

actor and comedian steve martin, star of "pennies from heaven" and "father of the bride" has done an ad. the candidate martin is endorsing officiated at martin's wedding. it is coming up. jonathan capeheart and maggie haberman join me next.

my opponent, he is doing a lot of -- a little tap dance. at the debate the other night, trying to wiggle out of stuff he's been saying for a year. doing like, it was like dancing with the stars. or maybe it was "extreme makeover."

debate edition. >> in the spotlight tonight, so-called moderate mitt. that was president obama in ohio reflecting how the mitt romney from wednesday sounded a little different from this mitt romney from february. >> we conservatives believe in freedom. as conservatives we're united by a set of core conviction. conservative conservative. i was a severely conservative republican governor. i think he's a conservative. six months after mitt romney, he chose the more conservative paul ryan as his running mate. fast forward from wednesday. we heard from a very different mitt. here is some that would have earned him jeers from a republican audience. >> regulation is essential. you can't have a free market work if you don't have

regulation. >> what we did in massachusetts is a model for the nation, state by state. >> so which mitt romney will voters be choosing if they give him the vote, the severely conservative guy or the regulation is essential, barely mentioned paul ryan, mitt romney. i actually think the answer is nothing else mitt romney said on wednesday. >> something this big, this important has to be done on a bipartisan basis and we have to have a president who can reach across the aisle and fashion important legislation with the input from both parties. i'm going to work together with congress to say okay, what are the various ways we could bring down deductions. we have to work on a

collaborative basis. not because we're going to compromise our principle, but because there's common ground. >> it does not sound so severely conservative. joining me now to help peel apart these mitt romneys is jonathan capeheart and maggie haberman. i think the basic principles, he will negotiate with the congress he gets. when he's in massachusetts, which is really he sort of derived his persona from at the debate and he's dealing with a legislature that is filled with democrats, he reaches across the aisles, he cuts deals, he has universal health care. it's hard to imagine mitt romney standing up to the republicans in congress and demanding to do everything in a bipartisan way. >> right. >> so is that it? it's really just about who he's dealing with and what kind of deals are open there to be struck? >> i wouldn't -- i mean, the mitt romney we saw on wednesday is not the mitt romney we've been seeing on this campaign

trail, at all. and you know, the idea that he is going to go to washington and reach across the aisle, there's a congress there that doesn't want to reach across the aisle. they want hip, if he gets elected, to do what they say. and on top of that, he didn't mention his name, but paul ryan would be his vice president. paul ryan is the one, i mean mitt romney says he has a 59-point plan, but paul ryan actually has a budget and it's a budget that goes far and away and is very specific in ways that romney has not been. if he's really this pragmatic guy, then he's going to be forced to do things that naturally he wouldn't want to do. i have read that much. it's way more than 59 points. maggie, in wednesday's debate, one thing i think has been a little bit conflated here, did you see mitt romney actually shifting positions or emphasizing different elements of his positions?

because when i watched and what i saw was a different approach to governance on display and a very different set of policies he was underscoring but not actually going off any of the policies he had espoused up to that night. >> i think you're right. what's been different was tone more than substance, style more than substance. i also think it's not a surprise that that's what he did at a debate that is not strictly for the republican audience. i think he's appealing to a broader group of voters. one of the things that romney has been very self-conscious about this entire general election is being called a flip-flopper. he was concerned about this in the primaries, but he has stuck with this on the issue of immigration until recently. he has actually had some positions that have modulated. he took a stand on obama's executive action about some temporary visas being issued and this was the first time he had commented on it in about 100

days and it was the day before the debate. he gave a little more meat on the bones the day before the debate about tax policy. but you're not seeing him change his stance and i think what you're going to continue to see is this dual campaign where you here one thing in rallies and another thing in interviews. >> one of the things that's fascinating about that, he did not shake the etch a sketch after the primary. if anything, the moderate mitt we saw a couple of nights ago, it's surprising that we haven't seen the moderate mitt much earlier. do you think what's happened here is that conservatives become afraid enough that they thought he was going to lose it? you saw with the 47% tape he stood by it and said of course it was a bad idea. do you think he just feels now that they are on board enough at this point that he can be this moderate. that he wants to be at least in the end of the campaign. >> you know, i understand where you're coming from, but i just don't trust that that's what's happening here.

what we're seeing, the mitt romney who showed up on wednesday did not surprise me, because it's the same mitt romney in terms of style and performance who showed up when rick perry came to his first debate. the same mitt romney who showed up when he needed to snuff out the candidacy of newt gingrich. he will do what it takes to put himself back on top and that's exactly what he did on wednesday. so whether he feels he has the wiggle room to push aside the far right wing and push aside conservatives, i don't know. i think in the moment, mitt romney thought this is my one and only shot, the biggest audience i'll have since the convention, to show the american people that i'm the guy to go up against president obama. >> do you think we're going to see a different strategy from the obama campaign going forward?

do you think there will be a different approach to the new mitt romney. >> i think you're already seeing it. i don't think you'll see the same barack obama. i think it's very clear that the campaign and the president regret having not pushed back on the debate stage on certain things mitt romney said. the president was very aggressive on the stump the next morning saying he wasn't telling the truth, i was surprised to see this version of mitt romney show up. you're going to hear a lot of that. it's a little harder to do when you're not before 58 million viewers in prime time or whatever the number ended up being. but i think that's what they're going to be doing going into the next debate and i think that is what you will see the president do on the stage in new york on october 16th. >> thank you very much for being here tonight. coming up, mitt romney says he wants to make it possible for every state to do what massachusetts did with health care. but if he's elected, he'll make it impossible for any of them to do it. i'll explain it with one of the architects of romney care. and later the crafty

political ad steve martin has done for a senate candidate. that is coming up. the capital one cash rewards card gives you a 50% annual bonus. and everyone likes 50% more [ russian accent ] rubles. eh, eheh, eh, eh. [ brooklyn accent ] 50% more simoleons. [ western accent ] 50% more sawbucks. ♪ [ maine accent ] 50% more clams. it's a lobster, either way. [ male announcer ] the capital one cash rewards card. with a 50% annual cash bonus, it's the card for people who like more cash. [ italian accent ] 50% more dough! what's in your wallet?

mitt romney said something that wasn't quite true at the debate. he kind of said a lot of things that weren't quite true, but this one stuck out to me. jonathan gruber, one of the architects of romney care and the affordable care act joins me next to talk about it. and later, how steve martin makes a political ad. you're going to want to watch this. just have to fire roast these tomatoes. this is going to give you a head start on your dinner. that seems easier [ female announcer ] new progresso recipe starters. five delicious cooking sauces you combine with fresh ingredients to make amazing home-cooked meals. to make amazing if we want to improve our schools... ...what should we invest in? maybe new buildings? what about updated equipment? they can help, but recent research shows... ...nothing transforms schools like investing in advanced teacher education. let's build a strong foundation.

let's invest in our teachers so they can inspire our students. let's solve this. so, i don't often disagree

with the great paul krugman, but i thought he got something wrong. he said that romney's big lie about health care is when he said this. >> number one, preexisting conditions are covered under my plan. >> that is a lie, as romney's campaign admitted later that same night. it does not cover preexisting conditions. if you've been uninsured in the last couple of years, you're not protected. 89 million americans would be left out in the cold. that's more than a third of the elderly population. but there's something else that romney said about health care at the debate that is also not true. that matters more and is getting much less attention. >> the best course for health care is to do what we did in my

state. then let's focus on getting the cost down for people rather than raising it with a $2,500 additional premium. >> it sounds like he wants to make it possible for every state to follow massachusetts's example. if you read romney's policies and i have. that's not what he wants to do. he's going to make it impossible for any other state to follow the massachusetts model. what you need to know here is that romney paid for his health care plan in three ways. two of those ways were taking federal government money and one of them was a state tax. the first way was this 385 million annual payment that then-senator ted kennedy had to negotiate for the safety net hospitals. president george w. bush wanted to end that which set off a panic and led to romney and kennedy going to the bush administration and cutting a deal with them. massachusetts could keep the money if they put it toward a universal health care plan. that's how it got started. romney and kennedy were trying

to keep this federal money. they wanted that money. then the state did two other things. they first covered everyone they could cover in their medicaid problem so they could get the most possible match from the federal government. right now federal medicaid from the federal government -- that is an incredible deal for people in massachusetts. they're getting subsidized by the rest of the country. and then the third way romney paid for it is massachusetts had long before romney was governor, imposed a tax in order to reimburse hospitals for the care they provided to the uninsured. romney took that tax and put it towards his law. so that's two pots of federal money sand a tax. so how much of romney's proposal relied on these funds? i asked jonathan gruber the mit who helped design the law. he told me 100%. that was my whole job, saying whether we could fit what he wanted to do within those three funding sources. the legislature ended up adding

more money to the law after he proposed it. but the fact remains it remains on federal dollars and on state taxes. but romney's health care proposal doesn't make it easier for other states to do what he did. it makes it almost impossible. he's not offering states access to federal funds for universal coverage. here's what he's doing. >> i would like to take the medicaid dallas dollars and go to state and say you'll get what you got last year, plus inflation, plus 1% and you manage your care for your poor in the way you think best. >> that sounds nice. it's a cut to medicaid of more than $600 billion. that means medicaid will not be able to offer other states the generous deal massachusetts got.

so then let's go through these three pots of money. romney isn't giving states a pot of money, he's cutting medicaid funding so unlike massachusetts, states can't rely on that either. and he opposes any new taxes. so on health care, he's kind of pulling up the ladder after him and his state. he's saying that he opposes universal health care at the federal level but he will not give states money they need to get it done at the state level. so under his plan there's no way to get universal health care done at all. but he doesn't really want you to know that. joining me now is jonathan gruber one of the folks who helped mitt romney design his health care law in massachusetts. it's great to see you. >> good to be here, ezra. >> you know these numbers for this plan, anything you want to fact check, correct or complicate here. >> no, you described it very well.

i think what candidate romney is not owning up to is the fact that the federal government made our plan possible. they gave us the seed money, if you will, more than seed, more than half the money we needed to make it possible and the rest came from a tax that was already imposed on the state that mitt romney essentially rededicated to his efforts. >> can even massachusetts's plan survive in the long run under romney's medicaid cuts, because if they begin squeezing medicaid, presumably that will squeeze a funding source that goes to your plan. >> the only way our plan works is we've gotten a generation waiver first from the bush administration then from the obama administration. if this had to be funded by all state money and that federal contribution was capped, the plan would wither away. i think you described it best. this is really pulling up the ladder behind him. this is saying the feds made it possible in massachusetts. i'm going to shut off that spigot so it's not possible for anyone else. >> it's possible that as romney touts what he did in massachusetts, the policies could make it impossible even in

massachusetts. he's not just pulling up the ladder behind him, it's pulling it up in massachusetts as well, potentially. >> it puts it at risk potentially. it's a question of whether the taxpayers in massachusetts are ultimately willing to bear the cost of this plan. they may or may not be but it puts it at risk. >> we talk a lot in this election about what romney's plan will do to medicare beneficiaries, but what happens to medicaid beneficiaries? you cut medicaid by 600 or 700 billion, what happens to the people who rely on medicaid, the poor or children or elderly disabled across the country. >> i just put together some numbers on this in a report and i find that in the year 2022 while the affordable care act will lead to 33 million more americans having health care coverage, romney's plan would leave to roughly 18 to 20 million not having coverage. so this is a huge hit to the possibilities for insurance

coverage in america. >> 50 million americans. jonathan gruber, thank you very much as always for being here. >> you bet. happy to be here. >> up next, the amazing steve martin gets political.

bob kerry, both a former governor and u.s. senator for nebraska is again running for the u.s. senate seat in his home state. after announcing his candidacy back in march, he sounded optimistic about his chances. >> i think there's a good chance i'll win the election. i love the people of the state. i love the place and i love the values. >> but now the latest polls in

nebraska aren't loving him back. they show him trailing his opponent. one reason, fisher has had the benefit of a lot of super pac money. she also has the endorsement of sarah palin, which could be a pro or con, depending who you ask. so bob kerrey is turning to his own endorsement, steve martin. >> hi, i'm steve martin. you probably know me as the actor and comedian. but did you know i'm also a home crafts expert? today i'm going to show you how to make a wad of paper. a wad of paper can be a lot of fun just to play with around the house or maybe toss expertly into a trash can. but who wants to go down to a fancy office building and root around in their dumpster to find a good one. so i'm going to show you how to make one at home with things you have lying around the house.

you're going to need a blank piece of paper, some paper clips, a few grabs, a stapler, a stick of gum, some scissors, and a hammer. so let's get started. take your blank piece of paper and make a fold. take one of your paper clips and just clip it like so. like this. make another fold and take a grab, make a puncture, bend the brads back like this. take another fold, take your stapler, give it a punch or two like this, maybe one more fold, use your stapler. a good stapler is always handy. then you're going to take your stick of gum and your hammer and soften up that gum so it will

make it easier to chew. put it in your mouth. and while you're doing that, you use grab, punch it through. in this case we're going to fold the grab over the top. take your scissors, cut off like this, take out the gum and put this on there like this. now you're almost done. use your last little paper clip like this. and voila, you have a beautiful wad of paper to play with around the house. and there you go. and i'll just toss it in there. thank you. a little da da. kerrey's campaign told the hill this will be a barn burner in the end.